Xfce Spin Of Linux Mint 17.1 Released With Out-Of-The-Box Compiz Support

[grndzro]

but your quote is straight up wrong. They don't contribute to graphics drivers. Or to the graphics stack at all.

No where in my last post does it say that anywhere. You are making things up. Your reading comprehension is terrible.

Just look at commits. How many of them came from Canonical?

Yes lets do that.
"Canonical contributed 548 changes in the period studied in today's report and would have cracked the top 30 if the foundation hadn't included "none" and "unknown" in the rankings." http://arstechnica.com/information-t...-contributors/
Cannonical pushes things back to Debian all the time. Considering Ubuntu is a Debian respin they give back an awful lot.

Just take a look at Cannonicals financial report. They are not making money.....and yet you expect them to be near the top in commits.

http://www.linux-magazine.com/Online/Blogs/Off-the-Beat-Bruce-Byfield-s-Blog/Reading-the-tea-leaves-with-Canonical-s-financial-statement

Cmon... if you are going to have such a strong opinion at least know what the F you are talking about.

They don't contribute to anything that they didn't create in the first place. They don't help anyone but themselves. They leech off of oss projects that they need and don't give anything back. Then they try to convince other distro's that they all have to do the same thing.

If everyone leeched the way Canonical does, every distro would be incompatible. and nothing would ever proceed.

Cannonical dosent leech, That would imply profit, Considering Cannonical broke even in 2007, and they do not have close to the money of the companies on that list, they contribute very high proportionally to their income.
Commits are supposed to go upstream. They go upstream from Ubuntu. They do not go upstream from Mint. Mint should be a part of Ubuntu and not apart from them.
Change>Mint>Ubuntu>Debian>downstream~cross distribution is how it should look. Mint is not in the loop.

I don't know when you got so filled with hate that you have to make crap up to prop up your BS opinion on all this but I truly feel sorry for you. Your lies harm the community you are rooting for.

[magika]

[arguing intensifies]

[grndzro]

[arguing intensifies]

Not quite sure that term is relevant. I feel like I am picking on someone who has zero grasp of reality and a severe mental handicap.

[duby229]

Not quite sure that term is relevant. I feel like I am picking on someone who has zero grasp of reality and a severe mental handicap.

Really? It takes one to know one apparently.

[kneekoo]

Mint needs to die. It served it's purpose in the dark days of Ubuntu unity but now is simply a me too distro.

All the official Ubuntu derivatives are simply better. The devs are wasting their efforts. Hell even Ubuntu Gnome is an official distro now which means Ubuntu will be a wayland/mir/x distro with plenty of DE maintainers. Installing Mint over Ubuntu is a bad idea in every way possible.

I guess you're one of those people who think Mint still is Ubuntu+codecs. That changed so long ago that I can't help myself wondering in what kind of cave you lived in. What other distros do you think should die?

Every distro has its reasons to exist and a user base to go with. That should be pretty much everything that should be said about any distro, regardless of our personal opinion about them. It's the whole point of diversity - for people to have choices. Whatever we feel most comfortable with, that's what we use. Some people need developers who actually listen, others need mature software, not the bleeding edge, others couldn't care less as long as the GUI fits their preferences and they can do their stuff with the distro. And there are people who simply start the PC to browse the internet and nothing else.

So what exactly is your point? If all you wanted was to troll someone... oh well, you caught another one.

[grndzro]

I guess you're one of those people who think Mint still is Ubuntu+codecs. That changed so long ago that I can't help myself wondering in what kind of cave you lived in. What other distros do you think should die?

Most Ubuntu/Debian packages and repositories work with Mint. So yes Mint is essentially Ubuntu.

Every distro has its reasons to exist and a user base to go with. That should be pretty much everything that should be said about any distro, regardless of our personal opinion about them. It's the whole point of diversity - for people to have choices. Whatever we feel most comfortable with, that's what we use. Some people need developers who actually listen, others need mature software, not the bleeding edge, others couldn't care less as long as the GUI fits their preferences and they can do their stuff with the distro. And there are people who simply start the PC to browse the internet and nothing else.

I can't fault any of that. They are all valid points from a user perspective.

So what exactly is your point? If all you wanted was to troll someone... oh well, you caught another one.

My point is Mint does not contribute upstream except for possibly LMDE. I have no problems with Mint other than that. They should standardize to Ubuntu and contribute, or go all in with their Debian edition and contribute there.
IMO however greedy people think Ubuntu's practices are, Mint is worse. They take Ubuntu which is freely given and give nothing back, while competing in the same exact segment. It's like having a dog that snarls and wants to bite the hand that feeds it despite being given everything under the sun.

I think Mint is a good distro and has a lot of potential but it needs to join Debian or become a full Ubuntu partner. There is nothing preventing the next Mint version from having 100% Ubuntu compatibility while retaining everything that makes it unique. Mint is non-profit anyway so it really shouldn't matter if their proprietary bits become a part of the collective.
Most of Mint's problems are compatibility issues because their team is too small to actually do a respin of Ubuntu properly. Leveraging Ubuntu's larger developer base and working closer with Ubuntu than they have been would benefit everyone.

[kneekoo]

Most Ubuntu/Debian packages and repositories work with Mint. So yes Mint is essentially Ubuntu.

I guess you can interpret what I said as Mint not being based on Ubuntu but that was not what I meant. Mint started as a Ubuntu-based distro and although its main editions are based on Ubuntu, there are some significant differences. If you look at them as a geek they might seem trivial, but they are pretty significant for the regular users (the majority).

My point is Mint does not contribute upstream except for possibly LMDE. I have no problems with Mint other than that. They should standardize to Ubuntu and contribute, or go all in with their Debian edition and contribute there.
IMO however greedy people think Ubuntu's practices are, Mint is worse. They take Ubuntu which is freely given and give nothing back, while competing in the same exact segment. It's like having a dog that snarls and wants to bite the hand that feeds it despite being given everything under the sun.

Why would you or anyone contribute directly to Ubuntu when developing custom tools for certain needs? The Mint developers mainly do two things: "Mint tools" - a set of additional software for the Ubuntu and Debian based distros -, and Cinnamon. Ubuntu has no interest in integrating the Mint tools, although they could if they wanted, considering they are open source, and they could integrate Cinnamon in one of their spins, but they invest a lot in Unity so it wouldn't make any sense. So it's pretty clear Ubuntu and Mint are addressing different user bases and we shouldn't expect any of these distros to do anything regarding each other. It's just open source for the masses, and the users choose what fits best for them.

I think Mint is a good distro and has a lot of potential but it needs to join Debian or become a full Ubuntu partner. There is nothing preventing the next Mint version from having 100% Ubuntu compatibility while retaining everything that makes it unique. Mint is non-profit anyway so it really shouldn't matter if their proprietary bits become a part of the collective.
Most of Mint's problems are compatibility issues because their team is too small to actually do a respin of Ubuntu properly. Leveraging Ubuntu's larger developer base and working closer with Ubuntu than they have been would benefit everyone.

I wouldn't say Mint is non-profit. They do make money from donations and sponsors with the main goal of have full-time developers working on the various Mint editions, obviosuly. The Mint tools are specific to Mint (menu, updater, software manager, backup tool, driver manager etc) and while nothing prevents anyone from using them in their distros (and some do), even if the Mint developers would want these tools inside Debian or Ubuntu by default, it's still not within their power to decide their integration.

So although Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu and Debian, these distros have their own purpose, identities and users. Everything that happens is normal. It's not Mint developers' duty or moral obligation to start fixing Ubuntu/Debian-specific bugs, although some of those got reported upstream and some of them got approved and fixed some issues. The Mint users financially support the developers because they offer something that works best for them.

Regarding compatibility, I don't think you're well informed. Or do you have some known cases of incompatiblity? There are only tiny bits and pieces that must be kept in Mint's way for compatibility with Ubuntu, and those are low-level components. The vast majority of Ubuntu software just works on Mint, no issues. Of course, if people start mixing wrong versions of software or expect Debian packages to be installed in a Ubuntu-based Mint, problems can arise. But would anyone do this? It doesn't make sense because the default setup and repositories offer almost everything under the sun.

There is very little difference between Mint17 and Ubuntu 14.04.
Stability? Mint is no more stable than Ubuntu.
DE's? Even Cinnamon is easily installable in Ubuntu.

Mint is behind on EVERYTHING.

The "little difference" is mostly in the Mint tools. And Mint was more stable than Ubuntu quite often. Mainly because basing a spin on Ubuntu requires various details to be taken care of, while bug fixes either pop up in Ubuntu or they get fixed by the Mint developers prior to a Mint release. It happened that they fixed things and reported them upstream but they didn't have to wait for Ubuntu to accept the patches because they were already tested and integrated in Mint.

My POV is I want Linux in general to succeed Windows eventually, and having such a popular DE that simply reskins 6 month old Ubuntu and calls it revolutionary without actually doing much of anything does the community at large a disservice by fragmenting user base. It undermines the economic stability of Distro's that actually move the ball forward.

Again, Mint addresses different needs. We get pretty much the same software in every distro, but each and one of them come up with stuff that some people find more useful than other stuff, so they stick with that distro. And Mint is very well maintained and it's not a reskin of a 6 month old Ubuntu. Usually, MATE and Cinnamon came out about one month after the Ubuntu releases, while KDE and Xfce came out about 2-3 months after the Ubuntu releases, not longer. With Mint 17, they only base new Mint releases on LTS editions of Ubuntu, for the majority of users who simply want incremental changes on a stable base. This allows them to be much more efficient in developing and maintaining the Mint tools, which is great.

How long have you used Mint? What is your experience with it?